Capital festival honours nation’s heroic king

HA NOI — A celebration was held this morning on the occasion of the 228th anniversary of King Quang Trung’s decisive victory against Chinese-Quing dynasty’s force in Việt Nam in 18th century.

Quang Trung’s Tết campaign went down in the nation’s history as one of the most brilliant and successful military campaigns in which he used the element of surprise to overwhelm a much larger force. An estimation of a quarter million Chinese soldiers were eliminated with the rest of their force allowed to leave the country in an orderly retreat.

Quang Trung, whose capital was set up in Phú Xuân, Huế, later went on to unify the country under his rule until he died in 1792 at the age of 40. Vietnamese people would often refer to him as The Cloth-robe Hero for his humble upbringing in a farmer family.

Dubbed - Đống Đa hill festival - by locals, the event is among the capital’s most popular and oldest Tết events with the city’s residents gathering en mass at the Đống Đa Culture Park, one of many historical sites where the battle for the capital took place in 1788.

It is traditionally held on 5th day after the New Year, making it an inseparable part of the capital’s Tết.